Fighting Escalates in Syrian Capital

BEIRUT—Syrian rebels and regime forces on Sunday battled for a fifth day to control a Damascus neighborhood, as both sides appeared to be preparing for a bigger fight in the capital this week.

Jobar residents on the east side of Damascus said government security forces warned them to evacuate the area by the end of Sunday in preparation for storming it. Rebel factions, who last week mounted one of their most ambitious assaults in Damascus since July and who have taken over army positions inside Jobar, said they are determined to use the strategically located neighborhood as a foothold for "the liberation" of the entire capital.

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The outcome of the fight in Jobar could determine whether a fate similar to Aleppo in the north awaits Damascus, seat of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Rebels from the Aleppo countryside assaulted neighborhoods in Syria's most populous city in July, triggering continuing battles with regime forcesthat have devastated sections of the city.

Similarly, fighters from several Islamist rebel groups spearheaded Wednesday's assault on Jobar and other areas along the Southern Flyover, a highway that snakes around the capital and constitutes the official demarcation between Damascus and its suburbs. Among the groups was the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, based in the suburbs and countryside east of Damascus.

With the exception of coordinated rebel attacks inside Damascus in July that the regime repulsed and occasional bombings inside the capital, government forces have for the most part hemmed in rebels through aerial bombardment and shelling and ground incursions in the suburbs ringing the capital.

"The security forces have informed us that they will commence their bombardment Monday and that we have to leave Jobar by Sunday at the latest," said a Jobar resident reached by telephone on Saturday who identified herself by her first name, Danya. "But they have started shelling already and we are preparing ourselves for a long stay in the bunker."

Danya, 24 years old, said her mother and six brothers refuse to leave Jobar despite the fact only 12 families remain on their street. She said her father was among the first people to be killed there in the spring of 2011 when the Assad regime brutally suppressed peaceful protests across the country, paving the way for civil war.

But most residents of Jobar, a religiously diverse working-class neighborhood that was once the site of one of the Middle East's oldest synagogues, have either fled to the relative safety of central Damascus or the rebel-controlled eastern suburbs.

Adel, who owns a garment workshop in Jobar, said he moved in with his brother in central Damascus on Thursday after rebels told him and others that they didn't want civilians to be "an obstacle in their war with the Assad gangs."

The fighting also appeared to be affecting adjacent areas. Mortar rounds fell near a police station on Arnous Square on Sunday, damaging parked vehicles but causing no casualties, said opposition activists. Residents on the streets between Jobar and Abaseen Square, a major traffic circle, said they were told by security forces to evacuate after a shell and a rocket hit the area on Friday.

Syrian state media made no mention of the fighting in Jobar or the warnings to residents, airing instead breaking news about a foiled "terrorist suicide bombing" in the neighborhood of Rokeneddin on the capital's north side. The report couldn't be verified. State media also touted the progress of military operations in the Damascus suburbs, where opposition activists spoke about several raging fires resulting from aerial bombardment and shelling by regime forces most notably in the town of Daraya in the southwest.

Meanwhile, not far from Jobar, an official ceremony was held in Damascus marking the enthronement of John X, recently named Patriarch of Antioch and all the East for the Greek Orthodox church.

The ceremony, which was broadcast on Syrian state TV, was held in the Holy Cross church in the neighborhood of Qasaa and attended by regime officials, foreign dignitaries and the heads of churches in Syria and neighboring Lebanon.

"God is not pleased to see coexistence with non-Christians with whom we share the same country regress and even vanish," said the newly enthroned patriarch, a native of the western coastal city of Latakia.

Syria's Christians, like other minorities in the country, have mostly remained neutral or supportive of the Assad regime, fearing the rising power of Muslim extremists in the ranks of the rebels who belong to the Sunni Muslim majority.

Another church leader, Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorius Lahham, warned on Friday that more than 200,000 members of his church have been displaced from conflict zones across Syria and that about 20 churches have been destroyed or damaged.

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